HANDS 4 UGANDA
Pocatellan’s nonprofit raises funds for new school in Africa
POCATELLO — Hands 4 Uganda, a non-profit started by Pocatello native Ariane Drake, celebrated its fiveyear anniversary Tuesday. Drake started the non-profit in 2010 as a 16-year-old after going on a mission trip to Mbiko, Uganda, a small village on a main road where many people pass through and prostitution is a huge issue on top of poverty and lack of education. There Drake volunteered at a school run and entirely funded by its founder Betty Wasswa, a native of Mbiko who had gotten her teachers certification and then came back to start a school in her small village. The school served roughly 70 to 80 students all crammed into a dilapidated building with few school supplies.
“I absolutely fell in love with this school and with Betty,” said Drake. “Being there, interacting with those kids took my heart. I couldn’t live with myself knowing they were hurting.”
Drake began raising funds to pay for muchneeded renovations and school supplies with a goal of fully supporting a K through 7 school. Now, five years later, Rock of Ages School serves about 200 students and provides education, daily meals and a clinic. But the quarter of the acre it currently stands on has become far too small. Hands 4 Uganda is over halfway to its goal of $60,000 to purchase four acres of land to build a new school. The new space will allow for not just a larger school building, but more room for the kids to play.
“It’ll give them a little more wiggle room in their seats,” said Drake, “and make sure they have that time to just be kids.” Currently Hands 4 Uganda has a title for the land, but the purchase hasn’t been made yet. Drake, currently a director on the Hands 4 Uganda board, and chair Karla Reynolds, said that purchasing land in Uganda provides some unique challenges. Fake titles and tribal laws involving land make purchasing land a more time-consuming and complicated process than it is in the United States. Drake said they have been relying on Betty and husband Abdu to facilitate the transaction, but they hope to purchase it in the next few months.
“Sometimes it comes down to paying off the right person,” Reynolds said. “Our Christian and American values say don’t. But I don’t live there so it’s hard to make that judgement.”
Reynolds, Ariane and Kim Drake, the organization’s secretary and treasurer, all stressed that it is their partnership with their Ugandan counterparts Betty and Abdu that make the organization really work.
“It’s not our American arrogance saying ‘we can do this better,”’ said Reynolds. “She [Betty] would still be running the school if we weren’t there to help.”
Hands 4 Uganda provides a way for people to sponsor the children of Mbiko. Twenty dollars per month pays for one child’s school, uniform, food and other expenses and this is mostly how the school is funded. Any extra money is used to pay for currently unsponsored children to attend school. But Reynolds said they can’t help everyone. She said Betty has final say over who gets in to the school, and it’s usually the poorest of the poor.
“The kids on the outside will always haunt you, but it’s one child at a time, as many as you can help.”
Ultimately the goal of the organization is to create a self-sustaining school with a mix of sponsored children and children with families who are able to pay tuition, which can help pay for more children who don’t fall into either category. Reynolds said Betty and Abdu are hoping to have a soccer field at the new school.
Abdu, a former player on the Ugandan national team, hopes to possibly use it as a training facility to attract talented kids and make the school a magnet for the national soccer team.
“Ultimately our goal is to not always be there,” said Reynolds.
Currently Reynolds travels to Uganda with a team once a year to see how things are going, and to help out as much as they can while they are there. She encourages sponsors or anyone with a desire to help to join her. Kim Drake said they’re hoping to take a group of teachers over there soon to train the staff at the school.
“It’s one of those ever growing organizations,” said Kim Drake, “but so rewarding in so many ways.”
Hands 4 Uganda is run entirely by volunteers, which allows over $18 of every $20 donated to go toward the school. This includes not just the volunteers to go to Uganda, but the board members as well.
“You just have to rely on the goodness in people’s hearts,” said Kim Drake.
“It sound cliche but it’s true,” said Reynolds, “and there’s so many things competing for people’s hearts.”
Currently they have $40,000 of the $60,000 needed to buy the land, and after that, they will start raising money to build the new facility.
“I wish I could be a bigger part of H4U,” said Ariane Drake. But she said being away from Pocatello and the rest of the board, as well as college, has caused her to step back a bit.
Ariane Drake will start her senior year at Westminster College in the fall and is currently interning for the Utah Department of Health, working on West Nile Virus research.
She plans to graduate in 2016 with a bachelor’s in Public Health and a minor in Spanish.
“In high school I had a dream to be a doctor,” said Drake, “but it just didn’t fit. With public health I can still make a huge impact.”
Ariane will be going with a team to Uganda again next June.
